Julie Demers’ debut novel, Barbe, was published to great acclaim in Quebec in its original French. It has just been published as Little Beast (Coach House) in an English translation by Rhonda Mullins. A new take on the fairy tale motif, it is the story of an 11-year-old girl in 1940’s rural Quebec who suddenly sprouts a beard and encounters hostile reaction from her neighbours. “The parameters of reality are stretched, using all the devices of fiction, and some of the devices of poetry, to create a sharper sense of self and of other, of beauty and of beast” (Literary Review of Canada). Julie Demers was born in Quebec City and now lives in Montreal.